Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 14 (Day 4)

Following is Chapter 14 of the sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis! Herein our heroes speak with the spirits of the dead, experience a horrifying revelation, and solve a mystery that had been confounding them ... Join alchemical rogue Paros, Elven barbarian Parthenia, transmuting wizard Pumayo, and moon priestess Selene in their Return to the Necropolis! 

Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 13"

In the morning, the party equipped themselves and, even though they were just going a short distance to where the bodies of the Dwarves lay, took all of their gear and provisions with them, having learned that they would not necessarily know or be able to control where they camped next.

Somewhat more relaxed now that the marauders had been dispatched, the companions made their way back down the hall from the laboratory to the stream room and up the stairs to the chapel of Thanatos. It seemed especially appropriate, Paros reflected, to be questioning the slain in an area dedicated to the God of Death.

Once there, the companions engaged in a bit of debate as to which of the two dead Dwarves Selene should work her necromantic magic on and precisely which questions they should ask it.

"Are we limited to yes-or-no questions?" Pumayo asked.

"No, it doesn't work that way," Selene said. "I can ask anything I like and, unless it is inclined to resist me and able to do so, it will answer to the best of its ability within the limits of its knowledge and the duration of the divination. But once I have questioned one of them I will not be able to speak to it again for at least a week."

Eventually the party agreed that it would be most productive to begin their questioning with the single female Dwarf, upon whose body they had discovered thieves' tools. Their rationale was that rogues tended to have poor impulse control and might thus be more inclined to spill their guts, as it were, and that the member of an inherently avaricious profession would likely have the most ready information about the whereabouts of the pilfered treasure. For obvious reasons, Paros did not necessarily like this line of reasoning, but he could not refute it and they proceeded accordingly.

Selene's ritual for speaking with the dead was not a quick one, and the priestess undertook an uncharacteristically prolonged invocation that Paros reckoned took about ten minutes.

"Calling the spirit of a slain person back from the land of the dead is not something to be undertaken lightly," Pumayo whispered to the rogue. "I cannot do so myself, but would very much like to learn how."

Selene finished her invocation and the momentary silence brought her companions back into the present and turned their attention to the arrow-pierced corpse of the female Dwarf. Paros shuddered, the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he saw the body stiffen and then begin to writhe almost imperceptibly as some small vestige of life was seemingly returned to it.

"Heed me, Dwarf!" Selene said in as commanding a voice as any of the companions had ever heard her use. "Tell me plainly where we might find the hoard of treasure that was taken from the tomb in yon catacombs, the one bearing upon its walls the likenesses of the Four Winds." This wording may have seemed overly detailed and exacting, but Paros and Pumayo had both heard tales of beings that perverted the answers to poorly-phrased questions, misleading their recipients or simply providing them with nothing of value. They were not dealing, of course, with a genie or a sphinx or making a wish, but they figured it was better to err on the side of caution just in case some of the same principals applied.

Paros felt his skin crawl as he watched the dead lips of the Dwarven woman begin to silently mouth words, and then shuddered visibly when a detached, unearthly voice that sounded like it was echoing in a sealed empty room began to emanate from the corpse.

"No ... treasure," the voice channeling from another world said. "Took nothing from ... catacombs ... don't know ... tomb of which you speak."

Jaws dropped around the room. This had not been what any of them had been expecting or hoping to hear and it made them reconsider and discuss what questions Selene should ask next. Presently, the priestess turned back to the corpse of the dead rogue.

"Dwarf, why did you and your companions come to this place?" Selene queried next.

"Hunting ... band ... of Orcs ... " the undead lips of the woman answered hollowly. "Searched ... for ... but did not ... find."

"Orcs!" Parthenia cried. "What Orcs? That can't be true ... she's lying! We haven't seen signs of anything but her and her friends since we got back here." The barbarian thought back to the party of Orcs and Goblin slaves that they had seen during the first day of their initial visit to the necropolis months before, but they had not seen any sign of them since.

"I don't think she can lie ..." Selene maintained uncertainly. "If she is unable to resist answering my questions then I believe she has no choice but to answer them truthfully. And if they were searching the catacombs for the Orcs rather than treasure, that would explain why they were down there for so long and came back without any loot. And, for that matter, why they lingered so long in the temple above and the room with the stream, which they would have been exploring for the first time."

"But she could not truthfully give answers to things she had no knowledge of," Pumayo observed. "So, perhaps, she believed she was hunting Orcs but her companions knew their true motives." None of the others really knew much about Dwarves or their inclinations so this explanation, improbable as it seemed on the face of it, made somewhat more sense when the mischief they had witnessed throughout the catacombs was taken into consideration.

As Selene had noted, she could only ask a particular subject two questions and could not apply the same spell to them again for at least a week, so they needed to select a different body for her second casting of the spell. They decided upon the big, heavily-armored male, both because he seemed to be the leader of the expedition and because, as a warrior, he would not likely have a mind as resistant to probing as a spellcaster (they had identified the other three Dwarves as being, more-or-less, a cleric, wizard, and bard, all of which would have had mental discipline in life that might make interrogating their spirits that much more difficult).

Selene repeated the lengthy ritual, directing it this time at the burly Dwarven warrior. When she completed it, his body twitched as it animated enough to respond to her questions.

"Warrior, why were you searching for a band of Orcs?" Selene asked. She and the others hoped that this question would either explain why the Dwarves were in fact hunting a group of the feral humanoids or reveal that they actually had a different mission if that was the case — and, presumably, if anyone knew this it would certainly be the apparent commander.

"Orcs ... raided mine ... attacked ... our clansmen," the Dwarf responded. "Killed ... some of them ... stole things ... We ... were avenging ... our kin."

"Stole things?" Paros asked, all of a sudden having an epiphany. "What things? Selene, make him tell us the things that were stolen." The priestess hesitated, as she only had one more question that she could ask, but the others could not think of anything better than that to ask, and so she did.

"Gold ... " the Dwarf said, his cold lips moving is his red beard. "Mining ... tools ... my uncle's ... waraxe ... "

His uncle's waraxe ... Paros did not hear anything that the corpse said after that, and instead thought back to the Dwarven waraxe they had found in the cavern where the sacred pomegranate tree had been cut down ... .

"Oh, by all the gods!" the rogue cried out. "The Dwarves had just gotten here when we saw them! They didn't do any of the awful things we found. Those ... those things were done ... those things must have been done ... by a bunch of Orcs!"

"I told you we should have killed those Orcs when we first saw them," Parthenia said peevishly.

"Are ... are you talking about the Orcs we saw digging up that grave plot last year?" Paros asked her incredulously. "What makes you think these are even the same Orcs? There are a lot of Orcs in the world, and there is no reason to think these are the same ones." Whether they were or were not, however, was completely moot at this point. And, suddenly, as he looked upon the bodies of the slaughtered Dwarves, the enormity of the situation began to dawn on Paros.

"We murdered these damned Dwarves," he said. "We're ... we're no better than brigands!"

"And we still have a band of Orcs to contend with," Pumayo observed. "Certainly if we want the old treasure — and possibly if we just want to continue searching for new loot or even simply leave."

All of this seriously begged the question of what they should do next. Selene had already cast her most potent spells for the day and was thus abridged in her ability to magically heal wounds, so the party certainly did not want to encounter — much less attempt to hunt down — a party of Orcs until she had fully replenished her powers. They therefore decided to make good use of their time and spend the rest of the day once again clearing out individual vaults. Before heading back into the catacombs to do that, however, they first retrieved all of their arrows and bolts from the slain Dwarves and undertook a number of other steps to remove overt evidence of their involvement in the killings.

When they were ready, the companions crossed back over the stream and, when they reached the large intersection where they had fought the skeletal hound, decided to return not to the passageway near the Anemoi tomb but to instead go north, toward where the previous adventuring party had been pillaging tombs. They spent the rest of the day clearing out some fifteen vaults, during which they contended with a number of traps and two animated corpses, mindless zombies that they dispatched with relative ease. In the course of these activities they suffered some injuries, used up most of their remaining spells, and collected a few more valuable art objects and pieces of jewelry. They then returned once again to the embalming chamber, which they secured as well as they could against the incursions of others, and spent the rest of the evening discussing what they intended to do the next day. 

Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 15"